No Country for Old Men

I've never actually sat down and watched this the whole way through. Never got past the point when Josh Brolin crosses the border into Mexico. Always wonder if it's going to feel underwhelming watching a movie after it's gotten so much hype.

That wasn't really an issue here. Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh is creepy and unnerving, which I assume is how Chigurh wants to be seen. He seems to enjoy messing with people, asking them questions as they panic. Even before he's really done anything to them, people just seem to recognize something in him that frightens them. There were times I really wanted someone to turn his questions back around on him. If he's going to kill you anyway - and he probably is - you might as well.

Carla Jean is the only one who really comes close, when she refuses to play his coin flip game, and that's probably because she's the only one who accepts she's going to die. He mocks her when she says he doesn't have to do this, but she's right. He doesn't, but he's going to anyway. I'm not sure why he bothers with the coin. He doesn't strike me as a person who would care to say it wasn't up to him whether someone lives or dies, but that's kind of how he plays it. Abdicating responsibility. All the others - the lucky gas station attendant, Woody Harrelson, probably everyone else he killed along the way - either didn't believe this was happening, or thought they could talk their way out of it.

Brolin plays Llewlyen as someone who isn't stupid exactly, or weak, but just isn't quite up to the level he needs to be for this. He can figure things out, make his move, but he's always about one step slower than the people on his tail, whether that's Chigurh, or the guys working for the cartel. And he's not willing to just entirely abandon his wife, and that's a mistake. It's not an awful flaw, but for his own survival, his best bet would have been to never contact her again. While the cartel tails her, or Chigurh takes out his frustration on her, Llewlyen could have just run. Taken the money and hauled ass as far as he could get. He might have won, in that sense, but he wouldn't put his soul at hazard, as Tommy Lee Jones says in that opening bit.

I think my favorite part was Llewlyen's second narrow escape at a hotel, after he found the tracking device in the money. Because it's too late to help, Chigurh is already there, and despite Llewlyen trying to be ready, he's not. Not for how Chigurh breaks the lock, opens fire too soon at the door. I think he tries to escape out the back thinking its clever, doesn't exactly work. Waits too long on his ambush, and isn't prepared to try and hunt a wounded killer to finish things.

When he's trying to drive the pickup to escape, Chigurh is just peppering the windshield with bullets, but all we see from Llewlyen's perspective is the bullet holes. We can tell from where they strike when he drives past Chigurh, but we can't see him anywhere. It might as well be a ghost, or God himself striking the truck for all Llewlyen can do about it. Even if he was thinking about trying to shoot back, he can't see anything to shoot at. That whole scene, I don't think he ever gets a clean view of Chigurh. He's a shadow barely revealed by a shot, or a blurry reflection in a store window. He's diving behind a car by the time Llewlyen tries popping up to kill him, so I don't know what he saw then. Would he have recognized Chigurh if they approached each other on a street?